Hundred is an automated inspection system for the components that make up devices like phones, smartwatches, and laptops. Hundred helps factories cut waste and prevent line-down issues by catching sub-100µm visual defects before parts reach the assembly line. Designs change so fast that traditional machine vision can't keep up, forcing factories to rely on manual inspection, literally people checking parts under microscopes to sort out bad parts. Human inspectors miss roughly 15% of defects, and a single bad part can turn a finished device into scrap. Hundred is replacing manual inspection with an imaging rig that scans an entire shipping tray of parts at once. The Hundred rig blocks ambient light and uses varied controlled lighting configurations to detect defects smaller than 100µm on a range of materials.
The controlled environment means Hundred only needs to scan a single good part before it can find defects, categorize them, and assess their severity accurately. Defects cost U.S. discrete manufacturers $45 billion a year, a problem Hundred's CEO, Erica, saw firsthand as a mechanical engineer designing devices at Meta, Google, and Magic Leap. She met Imani, Hundred's CPO, at Columbia University's admitted-students day in 2017 and Imani went on to spend five years at Twitch building software that handles billions of requests a day. Erica later met Iris, Hundred's CTO, in the Bay Area. Iris worked as a quant at Citadel.